My friend Erin and I went on a trip to Zion National Park from October 20th-28th. It was an amazing trip! We saw all sorts of wildlife, like desert big horn sheep, condors, deer, chipmunks, steller's jays, turkeys, bison, pronghorn, and many more! They have many hiking trails for all experience levels. They even allow people to go canyoneering and to rock climb up canyon walls. While out there, we also visited Bryce Canyon. This is another excellent place to visit with many nice hikes and excellent vistas. Read More
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My friend Erin and I went on a trip to Rocky Mountain National Park from June 17th-21st. It was an awesome trip! We saw all sorts of wildlife, like moose, elk, big horn sheep, squirrels, chipmunks, hummingbirds, osprey, swallows, ducks, red-winged blackbirds, and many more! Plus all the views throughout Rocky Mountain National Park are amazing! They had snow capped mountains, beautiful lakes, rivers big and small, and lots of trees and flowers. I'd highly recommend this trip to anyone looking for places to visit. The photo gallery I'm posting for this trip is my biggest yet! Read More
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Erin and I went to the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge on May 5th. Our primary goal was to find Post Oak Falls. Last week we were close to finding it, but we never could locate it. This week, though, I had GPS coordinates. This has to be one of my favorite trips to the Wichitas because we saw so many different animals on this trip. We saw three different types of egret: snowy, great, and cattle. We saw lizards, prairie dogs, plains bison, horses, wild turkey, a cormorant, fish, turtles, dragonflies, butterflies, longhorns, a deer, an armadillo, and many birds. It was really neat to get pictures of everything we saw. Best of all, we found Post Oak Falls! Read More
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On April 28th I went to the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge with Erin, Cheryl, and Stewart. We first went to the Dog Run Hollow Trail and hiked around the Longhorn loop. We saw quite a few eastern collared lizards. They are the state reptile of Oklahoma, where they are also referred to as mountain boomers. We also saw several turtles around French Lake. There were several flowers that were coming into bloom and we saw some butterflies enjoying them. After this we all decided to go on a hike none of us had tried before. It had rained about a week and a half ago, so we thought there might be some water at the Post Oak Falls. We had a hiking guide book, but it turned out to not be very helpful. We did happen upon a small 12 foot water falls in a little canyon in Charon's Garden. It fell into a nice little pond. By this point we were getting weary from this exploratory hiking, so we went back to the cars. Erin and I went to see the prairie dog town where we saw a bunch of prairie dogs and prairie dog pups! They were cute little fellows. However, they were on their gaurd most of the time since there were large crows and turkey vultures flying around looking for a meal. Over all this was a good trip.
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On April 21st I went to the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge and climbed Elk Mountain. I was glad to see that they had finished the new bridge over the sunset stream. I hardly remember the old one, but this new one is very large and very sturdy. I saw quite a few eastern fence lizards while on this hike. One of them had an especially blue belly! Very cool to see. When I reached the top of Elk Mountain, I wandered around for quite a while. I went over to the far side, SW corner of the top of Elk Mtn, to see if I could climb to the top of some of the very large boulders over there. However, there was no easy way to get up there. As I hiked around on large boulders, I came across two small puddles filled with grass. Each puddle was on top of its own boulder and one of them even had a cactus growing in it! Very strange sight. You can see pictures of all of this in the gallery.
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My Mom and I went to the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge on February 17th and had a really good trip. We saw all kinds of wildlife including bison, pelicans, cormorants, a heron, geese, longhorns, and best of all, an otter! We hung out and watched the otter swim around for a while and he also basked in the sun on a log for a while too. We visited the top of Mount Scott, the 40-Foot Hole, Lost Lake, and hiked on the Longhorn Trail at French Lake. Then we stopped by the Holy City and finally had dinner out in Meers at their famous Meers Restaurant.
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I went to Roman Nose State Park with my friend Erin this past weekend on 10/28. They have a lot of trails you can hike on and you can see various forms of gypsum all over the place. At the start of the trail the ground glittered from calcite. We saw lots of butterflies hovering around several flowering plants. We went up to inspiration point and I took a nice panorama of Lake Watonga. We didn't see much in the way of wildlife, but it was fun to hike all the way to the south end of the trail system. About half way through we saw a very deep erosion gully next to the trail. I'm not too sure what caused it since there was no running water here, but it probably erodes a little more every time they get rain. We saw several wildflowers and some of the juniper trees had blue berries on them. At the end of the hike, as we crossed the dam, the sun was low enough to give us some nice reflections off of Lake Watonga. I tried zooming in on one spot of these reflections and got one of my favorite shots from this trip. You can see it below, it's called "sun glitter".
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So, the peak of the Orionids meteor shower was this past weekend 10/20-10/21 from midnight to pre-dawn. Saturday morning was cold and only a few meteors showed up. However, Sunday morning had a much better showing. On Sunday morning I saw 53 meteors in total, and two of them were fireballs! The first one, at 3:06am, was impressive, but the second one at 4:37am was amazing! It flared up and left a “vapor” trail that was visible for a while after the meteor was gone. The third image below is an animated gif showing the second fireball plus its vapor trail, it runs from 4:35am to 4:45am.
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Moab is an amazing place to visit. I went with my friend Erin and we drove in on 10/6 and drove out on 10/12. We came in on Highway 191, which has several nice vistas, took a tour down scenic Highway 128 and visited Arches National Park, Canyonlands National Park - Island In The Sky district, and Dead Horse Point State Park. We spent the majority of our time in Arches NP visiting almost everything they had to offer. We even went back to Arches on three different nights to get some great night time shots.
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Boston was an excellent place to visit! It has so much history and many amazing sights to see. If you are there to visit, I highly recommend getting a 7-day pass to ride the train system around Boston. This will take you almost directly to all of the major highlights around town. Some of the places I visited were the Boston Public Garden, the New England Aquarium, the Boston Public Library, MIT, Harvard, the Museum of Science, and the USS Constitution "Old Ironsides". I'd highly recommend visiting here and seeing all these sights. I would however, recommend against anyone ever going to Fenway Park. You can read more about that below. All in all it was a great trip and I would definitely like to go back again some day.
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It took me two and a half days of driving to get to Baxter State Park (BSP). Some of that was an adventure in itself. I finally arrived at BSP on Monday, August 6th. Greg, Jonathan, Ariel, and I had planned to go on this trip since December 31st, 2011. Luckily, Greg was able to reserve the bunkhouse at Roaring Brook campground. It was nice to sleep indoors during our stay there. Though, with no electricity and no man-made running water in the park, it still felt like a real camping trip. We got up early on Tuesday morning to climb Mt Katahdin to reach Baxter Peak, the highest point on Mt Katahdin at 5268 ft. It was a very fun trip, and a very exhausting climb! Read More
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